It’s no doubt that these companies are making a fortune off artists and listeners and that is because, we have been living by the rule of Web 2.0 for a very long time now. It’s been a one sided kind of relationship for a very long time, here we are with Web 3.0 promising us something different, something that involves we the consumer, and the producers. I am happy with the fact that artist are getting rewarded for their arts through streaming, because, these artist work so hard to create these songs are it’s right that they get rewarded for it. Besides, that is their career and source of living. But even at that, these streaming platforms don’t pay these artist enough, the companies make a lot compared to what these artists receive.
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Music Streaming companies make money through monthly subscriptions and ads. Apple Music is strictly on subscription and doesn’t allow ads because, to access any music on Apple Music you need to pay a monthly subscription fee. Lots of people pay for this subscription monthly, but on Spotify, you have two options, you can subscribe for the free or you can subscribe for the premium. The free subscription means you can listen to music on Spotify for free but there are terms and conditions, you song will always be on shuffle and you will always listen to 2 minutes ads while playing your songs. But on the premium you won’t listen to ads and your songs won’t be on compulsory shuffle. If more people select the free over the premium, they have to listen to ads and these ads pay Spotify and Spotify makes their revenue from there. Which is quite smart.
But what if listeners get incentivised too? Because, in as much as the listeners enjoy the music, they also spend their time and money listening to them and without the listeners the artist will be no where. This is something crypto wants to correct with token-gated playlists. Imagine if music streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music integrated a blockchain crypto rewarding music platforms, where there is an NFT marketplace to which you buy an NFT, connect the NFT with your Web 3.0 wallet and earn tokens when you listen to songs. You will have to subscribe to listen to these songs, this will help create revenue for the platforms, the NFT marketplace where people trade their NFTs will also give the platform more revenue. Look at how much OpenSea and Bored Ape Yacht club devs made from NFT revenue.
Listeners getting incentives for listening to songs is not a bad idea, this will help a lot of people earn from doing what they love which is listening to songs. Let’s call it listen to earn.